Ok, I have messed up with an epic spell

[_Aaron_]

Hi there.

My more-than-10-years-old campaign entered the epic realms a year ago, and since then I am having "issues" with the party wizard.

I know, wizard and epic spells are not a good combination, but I'm talking about a not so optimized wizard, in a not so optimized party.

The thing is, I agreed to a very basic epic spell, a simple epic mage armor.

Straight to the point, thanks to an Excellent Magic Rod (Once per day when casting a nonepic or epic spell that has an experience point component, the rod supplies up to 2,000 XP), he can cast an Epic Mage Armor with an area effect, thus granting the entire party a 41 armor or natural armor bonus.

The result is the the rogue and the psionic monk (Fist of Zuoken) have ACs that are 24/7 beyond 70.

Looking at epic monsters, I can see they have a pretty sky-high attack bonus, but even the best of them have a hard time hitting my players.

I resolved myself to touch attacks, tripping, disarming, grappling, dispelling, and so on.
But this has become an all or nothing situation: if the opponents don't rely to alternative way of attack, they can't hit my players.
And I can't simply overuse alternative ways to circumvent the epic spell, dming all around it.

It's like an entire playing mechanic has been cut off.

Not to mention I'm having a very hard time creating npc encounters: if I optimize the npcs to hit 70+ AC, my players will have no hope to win an opposing attack roll of any kind, since they couldn't hit their own AC, screwing their front line combatants.

To sum it up: I'm feeling I messed up big time, but again, it's only a "basic" epic spell. Nerfing it seems like making pointless take the Epic spellcasting feat it in the first place.

What should I do?

[Mordaedil]

I don't think you've messed up too much, but you've essentially elevated their ECL quite a bit with that.

But just to be very clear, it doesn't stack with their existing armor, even enchantment bonuses and try increasing the ECL by maybe 10-12 points.

[Jack_Simth]

Greater / Epic Dispel Magic and Disjunction are your friends.

[J-H]

I'm coming up with a Spellcraft DC of 145 on this. 2000xp of mitigation is only a -20. Bumping the casting time to 10 minutes is a further -20, leaving a net Spellcraft DC of 105.

Is your wizard making all his numbers on this?

[OldTrees1]

Double checking:
Are all of the PC's AC scores too high for the monsters or are only the noncaster's AC scores too high?

There would be different solutions for the case where the monsters need a 20 to hit anyone vs only needing a 2 to hit the casters but needing a 20 to hit the noncasters.

[lord_khaine]

How have things gotten this messed up?
As i can read Epic Mage Armor is just +20 armor bonus. But the Psionic Monk and the Rogue should already have an armor bonus of at least 9-10.
So as i think Mordaeil also tried to say, then it should not increase their AC by that much.

[sleepyphoenixx]

Replace two of the feats of your melee monsters with Mage Slayer and Pierce Magical Protection (CArc). Take Pierce Magical Concealment too (or an Illusion Bane weapon) to make your casters lifes harder.
It's one of the few things that can help melee stay at somewhat viable threat at high levels.

Most standard feat loadouts suck anyway so you should re-choose them as a matter of SOP unless your party is very low-op.

[_Aaron_]

I'm coming up with a Spellcraft DC of 145 on this. 2000xp of mitigation is only a -20. Bumping the casting time to 10 minutes is a further -20, leaving a net Spellcraft DC of 105.

Is your wizard making all his numbers on this?
I checked the math, I was mistaken, the epic spell grants an armor bonus of +37.

The math is:

Epic Seed: Armor: DC 14 (+4 bonus to AC)
Change from touch or ranged touch attack to target: +4
Change from target to area (pick area option below): +10
Change area to 20-ft. radius: +2

We have a DC of 30 so far.

Now, to obtain more AC, the Armor Seed states that "For each additional point of Armor Class bonus, increase the Spellcraft DC by +2."

So, to get 33 more points, the DC increases by 66, and we obtain a DC of 96.

Now, the mitigating factors:

Increase casting time to 10 minutes: -20
Burn 2000 XP during casting: -20

Total DC: 56.

The 24 lv wizard has a Spellcraft modifier of +47 (27 ranks, Int 30, +10 Spellcraft item).

As you can see, he can take 10 on his Spellcraft check and cast the 37 AC granting Epic spell.


Double checking:
Are all of the PC's AC scores too high for the monsters or are only the noncaster's AC scores too high?

There would be different solutions for the case where the monsters need a 20 to hit anyone vs only needing a 2 to hit the casters but needing a 20 to hit the noncasters.
The main problems are the rogue and the monk, but the cleric has a very high AC too.

The wizard has the lowest AC, but, as you know, he has tons of options to stay out of danger.


Replace two of the feats of your melee monsters with Mage Slayer and Pierce Magical Protection (CArc).
Take Pierce Magical Concealment too (or an Illusion Bane weapon) to make your casters lifes harder.
It's one of the few things that can help melee stay at somewhat viable threat at high levels.

Most standard feat loadouts suck anyway so you should re-choose them as a matter of SOP unless your party is very low-op.

So, every melee monster should have those feats?

This is a perfect example of DMing entirely around this single spell.

[sleepyphoenixx]

So, every melee monster should have those feats?

This is a perfect example of DMing entirely around this single spell.

Every epic-level, primary melee monster should have a way to deal with magic defenses, yes. It doesn't have to be the Mage Slayer line, but it's the easiest option for a non-caster.
And it's not just that single spell. Magical defenses are common at that level, and everyone who wants to stay relevant needs to deal with them.

We're not talking about a group of bandits or some run of the mill goblin tribe here. Epic monsters are threats that wipe out armies, and their abilities should reflect that level of power.

[Zanos]

How did he actually develop the Epic Spell? A DC 56 spell takes 504,000gp, and 20,160 XP.

[_Aaron_]

Every epic-level, primary melee monster should have a way to deal with magic defenses, yes. It doesn't have to be the Mage Slayer line, but it's the easiest option for a non-caster.
And it's not just that single spell. Magical defenses are common at that level, and everyone who wants to stay relevant needs to deal with them.

We're not talking about a group of bandits or some run of the mill goblin tribe here. Epic monsters are threats that wipe out armies, and their abilities should reflect that level of power.
I see the rationale behind your suggestion, but it nevertheless imposes to build every melee creature with very specific feats.

Not to mention many high level critters have access to spell-like abilities, which would be greatly impaired by the Mage Slayer feat tree.



How did he actually develop the Epic Spell? A DC 56 spell takes 504,000gp, and 20,160 XP.
By the character Wealth by Level at page 135 of the DMG 3.5, a 20th level PC should have 760.000 gp.

The PCs are at 24th level, and the standard treasure for a 24 CR encounter is 116.000 gp.

All the PCs contributed to buy two Rods of Excellent Magic, since the wizard uses it to cast the epic spell for the entire party.

In this way he didn't have to spend any XP, since, as a special use of the rod, the caster can substitute the power inherent in the rod for the experience point development cost of an epic spell.
Doing so drains all the power from the rod, rendering it useless, but he has another one to cast the epic spell.

Since he uses the rod in the morning, when he casts the epic spell, he hides it well, in order to avoid it being sundered or stolen during fights.

[elonin]

I don't have experience playing epic, so maybe my comments are dead wrong. From what I've heard epic is just more of an arms race than non-epic, so numbers are just numbers. Also from various guides I've read numbers to ac a measure of protection have fallen to the wayside replaced by immunity to various attacks and miss chance.

[Bronk]

I think your game will be fine, but maybe limit future epic spells to preexisting ones, or, like for magic item costs, compare them to existing spells before you sign off on them.

The normal epic mage armor spell only adds a +20 bonus to armor class, affects 1 person, and has a spellcraft DC of 46, for example.

I would also say that while the armor seed can be used to add an armor bonus or a natural armor bonus at the levels you mentioned, once the seed is used in a spell, the bonus type should be locked down to one or the other.



You've already mentioned using touch attacks, which would bypass either of the armor bonuses, but epic monsters often have regular attacks that are much higher than your wizard's spell bonus. For example, devastation spiders have a +101 attack.

You could up the use of magic items by NPCs as well, with brilliant energy or impaling weapons.

You could have your opponents use temporary magic equipment as well, if you're afraid of your PCs getting too much treasure and wealth. Maybe they use potions of true strike, scrolls of greater magic weapon, and so on, or have the ability to create magic weapons on the fly, like tulani eladrin or Leshay.

Aside from those, you could have your opponents use their own spells to keep up, or epic spells, or targeting ray spells, or area affect spells, or walls of dispel, or greater dispels, or antimagic walls or fields, dead magic zones, swarms, and so on.

You might want to increase the number of non-fighty encounters as well.